Embrace the new, love the unknown - Be More Dog

In the modern world, fuelled by an increasing demand for digital technology, telcos represent but a small part. Calling, texting and phone-internetting no longer carry the same excitement (or value) as they did ten, or even five years ago. So, to maintain and reaffirm its place in the new world, O2 needed to reinvent itself and make an important shift: from telco provider to trusted digital products and services provider.

No easy feat.

To open a new chapter in the brand’s history of innovation we needed to put a new belief at its heart. A belief that O2’s role was to remove the barriers between people and the possibilities of technology. To enable everyone, from Skype virgin to Raspberry Pi extraordinaire, to take advantage of the technological opportunities around them. Only from this refocusing could we start to create, develop and talk about products that would be genuinely useful.

This established, we started in the usual place, “Let’s show off the great products we’ve already got!”, but it struck us that we’re already surrounded by brilliant tech and cool digital kit. Why isn’t everybody loving it? Talking about ourselves wasn’t going to be enough – we needed to find a higher ground.

The brief became less about us, and more about the consumer. The real barrier was the attitude towards tech. We’d become a bit spoiled by it all, blasé and at times cynical (a bit cat, you might say). We’d replaced our natural curiosity and playfulness with scepticism and ‘meh’.

To succeed, we needed to unlock the innate optimism and enthusiasm trapped in us all. To infect the nation with an attitude of positivity, enthusiasm and inquisitiveness towards technology. To challenge people to give things a go first and ask questions later. To skip the toe-dipping and dive straight in. If we could get people to lean forward, they’d be more willing to give our products a try.

In short, we had to challenge people to Be More Dog.

This was never about a TV ad or a couple of posters - it was a rallying cry. "We’re owning an attitude of positivity and playfulness and delivering it through everything we do, externally and internally. The reaction so far has been amazing, especially our ‘who’s the most dog’ twitter brand-off with Innocent and Tango." says Kat.

So embrace the new, love unknown and be, just that little bit more, dog.

Who's the most dog?

Following O2's use of a playful pup for its 'Be More Dog' campaign, a Twitter-off began soon after campaign launch.

Innocent posted a picture of a dog covering the ‘No’ part of a ‘No dogs allowed’ sign to read ‘Dogs allowed’ on its Twitter feed, prompting the O2 to reply saying 'This is actually a cat dressed up as a dog showing everyone how to #bemoredog ;)'

Following this, Tango and Betfair also got in on the act, embracing the spirit of the campaign. with dogs dressed as giraffe's and dinosaurs. Read more in The Drum's article then join the conversation below.

Tweets about "#bemoredog"